What comes to mind when you hear the word "spirit" or ”spiritual”? A ghost? The divine? A temple? Perhaps you picture a serene figure in meditation, a colourful cosmic sky, or the calming swirl of incense in a sacred space. But how often do you think of its original meaning of spiritus, simply meaning breath?
The act of respiration – drawing in and expelling air – is the essence of spirit. At first glance, there seems to be nothing spiritual in the mere act of breathing. Or is there?
The spirit, it turns out, is not only present in respiration. We share our breaths in acts of inspiration. Striving for goals is known as aspiration. Gathering and breathing together is conspiration, or conspiracy. All these words breathe from the same root: spirit.
So, what does the spirit even mean? At its core, the spirit represents its own essence. It's name is "meaning" itself. An idea which reflects well the Hebrew word Yahweh – the God whose name translates to "I am who I am." In other words, a word means what it says it means; nothing more, nothing less. The trick is to discover its hidden essence.
In my book Hiding in Plain Sight: What Language Says About Being Human, I touch on the idea of language as the greatest conspiracy. Not only because we can't be certain of its origins, but also because every conversation is a perpetual act of conspiracy – a shared breath of meaning. Everytime we speak, we partake in this ongoing conspiracy.
To illustrate this idea further, consider the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It is a tale of an original grand conspiracy around God. Humans conspired to build a tower so high it would pierce the skies and reach the divine spirit. But God scattered them into different languages, halting their efforts. God did not hide behind the clouds but right in between the conspirators – in the Word itself. It is there, in the Word, that it would never be found because it would hide in plain sight, or rather, in plain speech.
“For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them,” says the Gospel of Matthew. When two or three gather in the name of the spirit, or what the Greeks called pneuma, the divine presence (of meaning) is among them. Crucially, it is from the Greek pneuma, meaning breath, that the English word "name" inherited its life force. In speech, names give meaning to words, and words are brought to life by breath. This was poignantly captured by Shakespeare in Hamlet:
"Be thou assured, if words be made of breath,
And breath of life, I have no life to breathe
What thou hast said to me."
We can think of names as spirits of their own; not just empty breaths but elusive carriers of meanings. Consider one of the most essential names we use: "thing." In many languages, this term speaks of a meeting, an assembly, a conspiracy. The interesting aspect of the word "thing" is that the original meaning lies not in the physical object but in the social gathering that bestows the name upon it.
In ancient Germanic times, Ding referred to a tribal council where people discussed common issues. These gatherings were later called "things." Interestingly, the term "thing" didn’t originally refer to objects; it referred to these meetings, showing that the true essence of "things" lies in the conversations they spark. Just as a breath transforms into a spirit, the object becomes "thingly" thanks to this shared linguistic meaning. As Nietzsche observed, “what things are called is unspeakably more important than what they are.”
Similarly, the terms for "thing" in Romance languages – chose in French and cosa in Spanish and Italian – stem from causa, a Latin term for matters under dispute. Historically, when people couldn't agree, they would summon a tribunal over the "thing" (a causa) to ensure fairness and name it accordingly. That process was called "accusation."
This linguistic twist of framing disputes isn't just a Roman affair; it reaches back to the Greeks and Hebrews. In Hebrew, the word davar pulls double duty, meaning both "thing" and "word." The Greeks, never ones to miss a rhetorical flourish, gave us kategorein – to “accuse” – tying it right to the agora, the bustling heart of public debate.
These linguistic layers show that naming discussions in the agora were essential in shaping how society understood categories, which eventually became our "things." And if you're wondering about the nitty-gritty of grammar, the Greeks also influenced the case called "accusative" in modern European languages. Accusation, it seems, is a linguistic gift that keeps on giving. One could say it is the very essence of communication, where speech becomes a process of “naming” words by “accusing” them of what they become – meaningful “things” conveyed through breath.
So what is language then, if not a giant conspiracy – a collective breath around things to “name and shame” them with accusative meanings? Every name behind every thing emerges from these collective tribunals, where the spirit of meaning is forged through debates and discussions that move from accusations to their final outcome: consensus.
And this brings us to the natural outcome of any successful conspiracy – consensus. What is a consensus? Above all, it means a shared feeling (sensus), a deeply felt connection experienced among humans through the spirit of the word. Without this unwritten consensus – of sharing names for things in words – no language would survive.
The humanist George Steiner articulated this intuitive consensus eloquently, stating, “There would be no history as we know it, no religion, metaphysics, politics, or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any ‘social contract’ or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world.”
Behind every “thing,” there is a certain sense; a “common sense” of trust; otherwise known as a consensus on names. The origin of this trust, this sensus, is perhaps as ancient as language itself. Yet, how exactly it came about remains a mystery. An even bigger mystery is how it still manages to survive. The enduring consensus of language is outright sensational. God only knows how it works. Perhaps this single idea was at the very core of the ambitious project of Babel: only God knows.
